


A Star Wars Family Halloween

by BaronVonChop



Series: A Star Wars Family [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family, Fluff, Gen, Halloween, Halloween Costumes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 03:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12448359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaronVonChop/pseuds/BaronVonChop
Summary: It's Halloween time with family and friends, but Rey wonders if she's outgrown the holiday. She is twelve now, after all.(But mostly it's Halloween fluff!)Part of an AU series where Rey, Finn, Poe, and Ben are kids in the modern world.





	A Star Wars Family Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> Contains mild spoilers for Dog Soldiers (2002).

Rey watches out the window for trick-or-treaters on the drive to her Aunt Leia and Uncle Han’s place. She spots one group: several small children dressed as bears, accompanied by a parent dressed as a golden robot.

“Dad, there’s already kids out trick-or-treating,” she says.

Luke glances over, then turns his eyes back to the road. “They look cute! Do you wish you were trick-or-treating too?”

Rey sits up a bit. “I’m too old for trick-or-treating. I’m almost a teenager!” They have been having variations of this conversation all month, and finally reached the compromise that Rey would help give out candy at her aunt and uncle’s Halloween party.

Her dad smiles, indulgent. “Almost!”

“It’s just, I can’t believe they’re out already! We’re late!” She kicks the floor with her heel.

Luke sighs. “The groups of younger kids tend to go out earlier, but don’t worry. There’s still some sunlight left, and Aunt Leia and Uncle Han’s place tends to attract a lot of trick-or-treaters.”

Restless, Rey leans her chair back so that all she sees are the tops of the trees outside, their leaves shades of red, orange, and yellow. The sight lulls her, and before she knows it, the car is pulling to a stop in Leia and Han’s driveway.

As she gets out of the car, she feels a crisp chill in the air. It’s brisk enough to prickle her skin, yet not so cold as to be uncomfortable. Rey breathes in, imagining that she can smell cool dirt, brittle grass, and the crushed remnants of stepped-on leaves. Fall is a great season already, she thinks. Why bother with costumes and candy?

Han and Leia decorated for Halloween. Their front lawn features several tombstones bearing names that barely qualify as puns, like Emperor Palpitate, Grand Moth Snarkin, and Bob A. Fettucine. Plastic skeletons are stuck in the ground among the tombstones, half-rising from the ground. The bushes by the house are hung with spiderwebs, with several plastic snakes and bats lurking among them. A bloated pumpkin glows on the porch, its slitted eyes and leering grin lit from inside. Rey can’t quite figure out what the figured slumped in a chair by the door is supposed to be. A robot? A samurai? Luke pushes the doorbell. Rey frowns and nudges the figure’s chair with her foot, and its head rolls off.

Rey is still rearranging the head when her uncle Han opens the door. “Hey, there you are! Come on in!”

As they enter, Han clasps Luke’s hand and gives Rey a hug. He studies Rey’s costume and ponders. “Let’s see, jacket, trousers, shirt and tie… IRS agent? That may be a little too scary for Halloween!”

Rey sighs. “Hang on.” She reaches into her pocket and takes out a laminated badge, which she attaches to her lapel.

“FBI?” Han looks at the photo on the badge and reads the name. “Oh, I should have known! X-Files, right?”

“Yeah,” Rey says. “It was Finn’s idea.”

“It’s a good one,” Han says. “You guys really like that show!”

“I guess. I mean, yeah, we do, but that doesn’t mean we have to dress up like them.” She raises her arm and looks at the way the jacket’s sleeve hangs over her wrist. It was the best they could find at the thrift store.

“Hm,” Han says. He considers her for a moment, then turns to Luke. “So lemme guess,” Han says. “Pointy hat, robes, I’m guessing wizard. With a detachable beard, apparently.”

Luke plucks at the fake beard currently hanging loose around his neck. “I’ll put it on properly once the trick-or-treaters start coming. It’s just that it itches a lot. Not that you’re in much of a position to judge anyone’s costume.”

Han looks down at his shirt, which is a T-shirt printed to look like a tuxedo. “You’ll see. Right, Rey?”

The plan seemed pretty funny when they thought of it, but now she has a hard time seeing it as anything but childish. Han waits for Rey to say something, but she looks down. Han nods to himself, looking embarrassed. “You’re right, we’ll save the surprise.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Rey asks, looking around.

“Ben’s in his room,” Han says. “He’s been in there for more than an hour working on getting his costume just right. Leia’s --”

At that moment, Leia’s voice calls from the kitchen, “I’m in here!”

Rey and Luke join Leia in the kitchen, with Han following behind. Leia is wearing a sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants while making cookie dough in a bowl. “Happy Halloween!” she says, smiling.

“Hi, Aunt Leia,” Rey replies.

“And here I was, giving Han a hard time about his costume,” Luke says, mock-scolding. “You’re not wearing one at all!”

Leia raises her eyebrows. “Just wait! There are plans in motion.” She winks at Rey.

Luke smiles at his daughter, and says, “I never thought Scully would be in on such a conspiracy!”

“It’s not really a conspiracy,” Rey mumbles. As if her costume has anything to do with it.

Luke looks at the cookie dough and his eyebrows draw together in concern. “I don’t know if parents are going to let their kids accept home-baked cookies.”

“Pfft,” Leia scoffs, “they should be so lucky! Trick-or-treaters get the store-bought candy. These cookies are going to be for us!”

“Would you like a hand?” Rey asks.

“Not yet,” Leia says. “I’ll let you know when the cookies are ready for decorating. I think Han could some assistants, though.” Her hands sticky with dough, she nods toward the dining room table. On the table there are several black, gray, and orange sheets of construction paper, along with a pair of scissors.

Before Rey can ask, the doorbell chimes. “Trick-or-treaters?” she asks, her heart speeding up despite herself.

Han strides toward the door, long-legged. “Let’s go see!” He snatches up a plastic cauldron full of candy from the couch as Rey opens the door.

“Trick or treat!” Poe says, grinning. He is dressed like a cowboy, with a cowboy hat on his head, a red bandana around his neck, a flannel shirt under a fake leather vest, blue jeans, and boots. Standing next to Poe, Finn looks momentarily startled. He wears a suit that is as close as they could find to Rey’s in the thrift store, which is to say, not that close. Poe nudges Finn. “You might as well say it, too.”

A smile spreads over Finn’s face. “Trick or treat!”

Rey feels a pang: Finn’s strict First Order parents never let him go trick-or-treating, so this is the closest he will ever come to it.

Han laughs. “Aren’t you a little old for this?”

The joke does not seem funny to Rey, but Poe laughs. “Yeah, so you’d better give us some candy, or we’ll egg your house and TP your trees!”

“All right, come on in,” Han says.

As Poe passes Rey, he tips his hat to her and says “Evening, ma’am,” with a charming smile.

She feels herself blush. Of course Poe would have a knack for picking a cool costume, but then, Poe would probably look cool in anything.

Finn points to Poe and says to Rey, “Look, Scully, a time traveller! We need to investigate this!”

Rey gives a small smile. She had been worried when she couldn’t find a decent red wig at the Halloween store for her Scully costume. Finn, who looks even less like Mulder, nevertheless wears his Mulder ID badge with pride. There is something refreshing about Finn’s reliably high spirits, but at the same time, she wonders how much of it she can stand tonight before it starts to get exhausting.

Han tells Poe, “I’m glad you could make it, and thanks for giving Finn a ride. Rey said you might have other plans.”

“Well, we had some vague plans for a party with some of my friends from school, but that fell through, so I was really glad to have an invitation to spend time with all of you!”

Rey looks away. While she had expected that Poe would have other plans, she doesn’t like being his backup plan, or his secondary friend.

Luke says, “I’m glad you chose to join us. Did you skip the other party because you were worried that some of the kids there would be making bad decisions?”

Rey groans. She should have learned by now never to underestimate how uncool her dad can be.

Poe shrugs. “We went out for burgers last nights, and most of my friends got food poisoning. I lucked out that I chose a fish sandwich instead of a burger.”

Once everyone has finished catching up, Rey asks her uncle, “Aunt Leia said that you could use help with something. What can we do?”

“Right this way.” Han leads them into the dining room, where they sit around the table. Han picks up a sheet of black construction paper and some scissors. He starts to fold the paper as he talks. “I’m sure you’ve done this sort of thing before. The idea is to make a chain of something spooky.”

Finn looks around. “Aren’t we supposed to have some kind of pattern? Or, you know, instructions?”

“Nah, just wing it,” Han says. “How hard can it be?” He proceeds to cut up the black paper, occasionally pausing to turn it this way and that, frowning and muttering under his breath. When he is finished, he unfolds it and reveals a chain of bats. “See? Nothing to it!”

Rey points at the bats’ heads. “I think you forgot their ears.”

“Easily fixed!” Han folds them up again, folds the heads over, and makes a few cuts. When he unfolds the chain again, the bats look like they have round mouths that take up most of their heads. “Reminds me of something I found under the hood of my van once,” Han laughs.

They each try their hand at cutting some chains. Poe’s orange pumpkins turn out more charming than spooky, with big goggly eyes and small smiles that give them an air of aged wisdom.

Luke aims low with a chain of full moons made of gray construction paper. When Han gives him a hard time about it, Luke folds them back up and cuts a smaller circle out near the top. “It’s a crater!” he declares.

Finn tries to make a chain of pumpkins like Poe’s, but they end up looking like circular, toothy maws in lumpy round heads.

Poe points. “Are those tentacles?”

Finn studies his creation. “They were supposed to be vines.”

Rey gets ambitious with her ghosts and takes longer than everyone else. Having decided that gumdrop shapes with holes for eyes are too cutesy, she tries for more human shapes. They come out looking pretty okay, though the heads are shaped like upside-down buckets with large frowns nearly bisecting their faces.

“All right, let’s hang them up!” Han announces, and they return to the living room to tape the chains above the door and over the windows.

Rey adds pieces of tape to her ghosts and tries to get them in position in the window. “I can’t quite reach,” she says, on her tiptoes. She pulls the ghosts back down and straightens out the tangled pieces of tape.

Rey tries to make eye contact with Finn or Poe, but they are both too busy hanging up their own creations. “Let me help you!” her uncle offers, reaching for the ghosts. Han must notice the look on her face, because he pauses. To her horror, he then adds, “Or maybe Finn or Poe could help you?”

Poe has just finished hanging his chain. “Sure!” he says, coming over. Rey hands him the ghosts while studying her feet. As Poe hangs them, he spots something outside. “Looks like we’ve got some trick-or-treaters incoming!”

Sure enough, the doorbell rings a few moments later. Since Han, Luke, Poe, Finn, and Rey are all standing by the door, they hesitate, unsure who should be the one to open it.

Luke motions to Finn. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

Finn hesitates. Han nods in confirmation, and Finn opens the door, smiling. “Trick or treat!” he exclaims.

The group of small children, dressed in hooded brown robes, stare up at him, their wide eyes reflecting the porch lights. The adult accompanying the kids steps closer, giving Finn a suspicious look as though wondering what he is trying to pull.

Rey realizes that the kids are unsure how to proceed, since Finn has beaten them to saying “trick or treat.” Finn seems to realize it, too, because he freezes. Rey doesn’t think she could stand it if Finn were to get discouraged. Rey may be tired of Halloween, but Finn hasn’t had any previous Halloweens to be tired of. She prompts the kids, “...That’s what you were about to say, right?”

Some of the hoods nod, but they remain mute.

“So…” Rey says, trying to smile in an encouraging way. “Go ahead.”

“Trick or treat,” the kids manage to get out, some more bravely than others.

Finn thrusts the cauldron of candy out to them. The kids, recovering their courage due to the proximity of candy, thrust their hands in and help themselves to fistfuls of candy.

The children leave, but not before the adult with them gives Finn another dark look. Rey feels a weight of embarrassment on Finn’s behalf. She doesn’t want to know what the adult is thinking of Finn right now. Should she have said that it’s okay, because Finn was raised by the First Order? Would that have made things worse? It makes her angry at herself, but Rey can’t help but wish that her friend was more normal.

Finn sighs with relief before giving Rey a nervous smile. “Thanks for the save! I can’t believe I said ‘trick or treat,’ when they were the ones who were supposed to say it!”

Rey smiles back, trying not to let her frustration show. “It’s okay. You just got excited.”

Poe claps Finn on the shoulder. “Nothing wrong with that. Besides, it’s good to mix things up a bit sometimes. It’ll teach those kids to think on their feet. In any case, they really earned their candy!”

“Speaking of which,” Han adds, “if you want to have any candy left by the time the night is over, you should probably hand them the candy rather than letting them take it themselves.”

“I’ll remember next time!” Finn promises.

Rey touches Finn’s arm. “Maybe you could always say ‘Happy Halloween’ when you open the door. That way, you won’t accidentally say the wrong thing.”

Finn looks serious. Rey wonders if he can tell how she is feeling, or if he is starting to reach his limit for advice. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that, too.”

The next opportunity does not take long to arrive: the doorbell rings again. Outside is a group of kids dressed in some kind of uniform, with yellow, blue, or red shirts featuring a chevron-shaped insignia on the left side, all with black pants and boots.

“Trick or treat!” the kids exclaim. “And prosper!” one of them adds, at which they all giggle.

“Happy Halloween!” Finn exclaims. “Are you…” He pauses.

Rey stares blankly at the kids. She turns to Finn, who looks as lost as she feels. Turning back to the others, she gets back shrugs and shaking heads. Nobody has any idea what the costumes are supposed to be.

Finn gives them one piece of candy each. Rey starts to object, but she stops herself. For some reason, for this group, one candy each seems enough.

After the kids leave with their candy, Rey doesn’t know what to do next. Luckily, for once her dad has a good suggestion: “We should figure out something to do between trick-or-treaters.”

“We have some scary movies the kids could watch,” Han says, pointing back toward the television and couch with his thumb. “Most of our horror stuff is on DVD, not Blu-ray, so you’ll have to switch from BB-8 to R2-D2.”

Poe stops. “From what to what?”

“Oh, our Blu-ray player is named BB-8, and our DVD player is R2-D2.”

Finn laughs. “You named them?”

“It started when Leia’s dad gave us a stereo he called C-3PO. We named the DVD player R2-D2 so that it would have a friend. Then when we got a Blu-ray player, we had to name that, too. Well, look around the DVDs and pick something out.” As Luke opens his mouth, Han adds, “Nothing rated R.”

Poe looks genuinely puzzled. “What horror movies aren’t rated R?”

“See what you can find,” Han says, opening the cabinet where the DVDs are kept.

Poe starts to peer through the rows of movies. “I guess Finn and Rey are a little young for rated R movies,” he admits. “I wouldn’t want to give them nightmares.”

Rey glares. She can feel her face getting warm, and her hands form fists at her sides. Poe isn’t even looking her way, and he made the comment with no apparent malice, but something about that rankles her more: he can’t just dismiss her like that, for only being a couple of years younger. “If that’s how you feel, then I wish you’d spent your Halloween with your stupid friends with stupid food poisoning!”

Poe turns, his mouth open and his eyes wide. Everyone else is staring at her, too, but she can’t stop herself. Rey wants to apologize immediately, but her brain isn’t cooperating. She wants to leave, to go somewhere where she can’t see her friends’ shocked faces. If only she were back in her room, she could burrow under the covers until she felt better.

After long, painful moments of of silence, Han, looking sheepish, says quietly, “Hey, kiddo, I haven’t put Chewie’s costume on him yet. Maybe you can help me do that? He’s down in the basement.”

Rey doesn’t trust her voice to speak, so she just nods mutely.

Han looks at Luke. “You, too, kid. I think we could use your help.”

As Rey and Luke follow Han toward the stairs, Han turns back to Poe and Finn. “Go ahead and pick out a movie. You can start without us. We won’t be long.”

The basement is cool and dark. Chewbacca dozes on his side in a soft, gray doggie bed that has been squished into a U-shape from the way Chewie is lying on it. When he hears people come down the stairs, he raises his head and his tail thumps against the bed.

“I’ve got his costume over here,” Han says. The costume is a padded black belt with two plush bat wings sewn onto it. “Wanna help me get it onto him?”

Han and Rey approach Chewie, who stands up, his tail wagging at the prospect of receiving attention. Luke stays back, seemingly lost in thought.

Rey takes her time petting the old dog, stroking his head and wobbling his ears and patting his sides. She is in no rush to start putting on the costume, maybe because it reminds her that it is Halloween, which in turn reminds her of what happened upstairs.

After a while, Rey’s hands drop to her sides, and she looks into the kind eyes of Chewie. Her shoulders lift in a sigh. Sensing her distress, Chewie turns and noses around in the tangle of his doggie bed. He finds a chew toy--perhaps a penguin or an owl, Rey can’t quite tell--and brings it over to Rey, dropping it at her feet.

“Thanks, Chewie,” Rey says. When she speaks, she hears that her voice sounds close to tears. “You’re a good boy.” She rubs her eyes on her sleeve, which reminds her that she is wearing her Scully suit. It makes her feel ridiculous, and she resolves not to cry while wearing a lame, stupid Halloween costume.

“Come on,” Rey tells the dog, “let’s get you into your costume.”

Han brings the costume over. “Okay, buddy, just hold still while we put this on you.” Chewbacca looks at the costume dubiously, but he allows Rey to hold him in place while Han fastens the costume on. “See?” Han says when he is done. That wasn’t so bad.”

Rey adjusts the bat wings a bit. “There, now we can both look dumb,” she says.

Han looks at Rey as though he wants to say something to her, but he changes his mind and pats his dog on the head instead. “I know you’re not too crazy about wearing a costume,” he tells the dog, who gazes at him patiently, “but you get to see Rey and Luke, and Finn and Poe, and you like them, right? That’s worth wearing a costume for a little bit.”

Rey feels like Han has a point: she is glad to see her family and friends together. Whether it is worth the childish costumes and silly decorations, she has not yet decided.

“That’s what holidays are for,” Han continues, still pretending to speak to Chewie. “They’re an excuse for people to get together and spend time with each other.”

That part sounds a bit hokey to Rey, but if Chewie can bravely wear a Halloween costume, then so can she.

Han leads Chewie up the stairs to join the others, with Rey following behind. As he brings up the rear, Luke tells his daughter, “It’s okay if you’re not having fun. Of course, I want you to have a good time, but don’t feel like you’re obligated to enjoy everything. ‘Mandatory fun’ rarely is.”

Is that a guilt trip, or the opposite? Sometimes Rey wishes her dad were a bit less cryptic.

When they reach the top of the stairs and enter the living room, they find Poe and Finn sitting on the couch, watching an Addams Family movie on the television. So it seems Poe doesn’t mind watching non-rated-R horror movies after all, not that an Addams Family film could even be considered horror. Luke, Han, and Chewie go to join them, but Rey hangs back, suddenly unsure of how to proceed. She hears someone come up beside her and turns to see Leia, who gives her a warm, sympathetic look.

“The cookies are ready to be decorated,” Leia says in a soft voice.

Rey turns to tell the others, but Leia places a gentle hand on her arm. “Let’s just do the first couple together, you and me, okay?”

Rey follows Leia into the kitchen, and Leia quietly closes the door behind them. There are several cooling racks laid out on the counter, with cookies shaped like bats, cats, and ghosts. Leia hands Rey a bowl full of orange icing and a spatula. “Not too much, now,” she says. “But don’t skimp on it, either!”

As Rey smears icing onto the cookies, Leia follows up by adding black sprinkles on top. “If you ask me,” Leia says, “the best holidays are the ones with treats involved. Luckily, there’s a lot of those.” She looks at Rey. “Did Han and Luke have good advice?”

“I guess.”

Leia raises her eyebrows. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“Well…” Rey thinks for a moment while she evens out some icing. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here,” she says slowly. “It’s just… I dunno. Halloween’s kinda dumb.”

“Yeah, it is,” Leia says. Rey looks at her aunt in surprise. Leia shrugs. “Dressing up, eating junk food, decorating with pumpkins and bats… it’s all kinda dumb. Little kids can do stuff like that and enjoy it without too much trouble, but older kids? And adults?” She lifts the bottom of her sweatshirt, revealing a bit of the black garment underneath. “But it can be fun, too. Maybe you have to look hard to find what’s fun for you, and maybe you have to put up with the things that aren’t fun to enjoy the things that are. But guess what? That’s part of growing up.” She gives Rey a wink. “Sucks, huh?”

Rey laughs quietly. “Yeah.” They finish the row of cookies. “Thanks, Aunt Leia. I feel a little better.”

“Attagirl. Now, do you think you could go get those others to give us a hand with these cookies?”

Rey reaches for the door, but she pauses. Leia studies her for a moment, then asks, “Wondering what to say to Poe?” Rey nods. Leia sighs. “You were feeling annoyed with Finn and frustrated with Poe and embarrassed about your costume.”

“You noticed all that from in here?”

“I’ve got a sense for these things. Well, of course you were going to snap at someone eventually. It’s only natural. Just bad luck for Poe that he was the one on the receiving end. Trust me, I’ve been hanging around a teenager every day, I know how it goes. Though you’re not as moody as that one.”

Rey gives a wobbly little smile. “Well, I’m not a teenager yet.”

“True,” Leia inclines her head. “So the jury’s still out. I’ll tell you what, though: if you’re worried about what to say to Poe, start with ‘I’m sorry’ and see where it takes you.” She waves her hand toward the door. “Now go on, before the cookies get stale!”

Rey opens the door and walks into the living room. “Hey, Poe,” she begins.

Poe cuts her off, “Wait, before you say anything, please let me apologize. That was a jerk thing to say. I guess I was feeling frustrated about not being able to spend Halloween with my friends from school, but that’s not fair to you guys. The truth is, I’m glad I’m here.” He puts an arm around Finn and gives him a one-armed hug.

“Well, I’m sorry, too,” Rey says. She can hear that her voice is starting to get choked up, so she hurries to get it all out. “Even if I was in a bad mood, I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

Poe waves her apology away. “Does that mean you’re in a better mood now?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, in that case, I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me.”

Rey nods. “Deal,” she says, her voice small.

Finn pats Poe on the arm, then comes over to Rey and gives her a quick hug. “Thank goodness!” he exclaims. Then he adds, with a twinkle in his eye, “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to decorate any cookies!”

Finn, Poe, Luke, and Han enter the kitchen, and Leia gets them started making cookies. Once they all have a task, Leia joins Rey in the living room. “Now, where’s that son of mine? I know he said he was working on his costume, but this is getting ridiculous!”

She walks over to the stairs leading up to the second floor. “Ben!” she shouts.

There is a thump from the kitchen, followed by Han shouting “Chewie!” and everyone laughing. Leia looks over her shoulder. “I should make sure they’re not breaking anything valuable. Rey, could you go fetch your cousin?”

Rey climbs the stairs to Ben’s door. It has fewer posters and signs since the last time she visited, which Rey takes as a good sign that maybe Ben is starting to grow out of the moody phase he was in before.

She knocks on the door. She waits for a few moments, but there is no response, so she knocks louder. Still no noise from inside. Rey puts her ear to the door. She can hear something--perhaps some music playing--but it’s faint.

“Ben? Are you still getting dressed?” she asks, to no avail. “How long can it possibly take to put on a costume?” She tries the doorknob and finds that it is not locked. “I swear, you’d better be decent in there,” she says loudly, then opens the door.

Ben is sitting at his computer wearing headphones. The music she heard through the door is coming from his headphones: he must have the volume cranked up. On his monitor, army soldiers trapped inside a cabin fight off werewolves. She watches as one of the soldiers gets messily killed by a werewolf, blood spurting into the air: unlike the one playing downstairs, this movie is definitely rated R.

He is dressed in his Halloween costume, which takes Rey several moments to fully take in. She already knew he was dressing as a vampire, since she had run into him at the Halloween store looking for fake blood. She had secretly passed that information on to her aunt and uncle, setting in motion the plan that Han and Leia are both clearly looking forward to unveiling. For the moment, Rey tries to wrap her mind around the dizzying array of costume pieces her cousin has assembled. The costume features a tattered gray cloak, a black half-cape with a deep red lining, black pants adorned with an asymmetrical array of buckles, several belts around his waist, each with a different, Halloween-themed belt buckle (a coffin, a gravestone, a skull, and a bat), a short-sleeved black shirt with a wide collar open at the throat, a burgundy vest, fishnet sleeves, gauntlets with even more buckles, and an improbably long scarf. Rey suspects that Ben looked to his favorite anime series and video games for inspiration, and, unable to decide between them, took ideas from all of them. No wonder it took him so long to get dressed.

Ben eventually looks over at her, then, taking his time, lifts his headphones off of one ear. “Yeah?”

Rey crosses her arms. “Are you planning on coming downstairs?”

“What?” He has made no effort to turn down the volume, and Rey can hear the music and sound effects blaring from the headphone speaker held above one ear.

Rey compresses her lips and mimes turning down a large volume knob. Ben runs his fingers along his headphone cord to the volume and turns it down. The movie continues to run, but now Rey can no longer hear it, which she takes as a sign that it is playing at a more normal volume.

“Your mom wants to know if you’re coming downstairs. It looks like you’re done putting on your costume.”

Ben looks down at himself as though he had forgotten he was dressed for Halloween. “I guess.”

“You haven’t even said hi to Finn or Poe.”

“They’re _your_ friends,” Ben says.

He’s right, Rey realizes. They are her friends, and they came to the party for her sake. She feels both pleased and guilty, the emotions swirling together in a flush. She will need to unpack that later. For now, she goes back to safer ground: “You’re going to miss all the trick-or-treaters if you stay up here.”

Ben shrugs. “That’s okay. They’re all just kids dressed like superheroes, fairies, and pirates.”

Rey tries a different tactic. “Your mom baked cookies, and everyone’s helping decorate them.”

That makes Ben pause. Try as he might, it’s hard to look unconcerned when the topic is his mom’s fresh-baked cookies. “Well… maybe I’ll go down and eat a couple later. Once the movie’s over.”

“What if there aren’t any left?”

Ben glances at the screen, then toward the stairs. Finally, he says, “Put a couple aside for me, okay? I’ll be down soon, it’s almost at the end!”

Rey can’t suppress a smile of victory. “I’ll see what I can do.” She knows that she should say something about his costume. Assembling so many pieces, not to mention finding some way to wear them all at the same time, must have taken a lot of work. “By the way, your costume is…” What should she say? Impressive? Fancy? She should say something soon, before her pause becoming noticeable. “...cool.”

Ben smiles, gratified and a little shy. “Thanks.”

When Rey goes back down to the kitchen, Leia asks her, “What’s the situation? Did he accidentally zip himself together into a pretzel with his million zippers?”

“It’s buckles this year,” Rey tells her aunt. “He’ll be down in a bit. He says to put a couple aside for him.”

“No fair,” Finn says. “We did all the work of decorating them, and he still gets some?”

Leia turns to him with a cheeky smile. “Oh, you did all the work?”

“I mean…” Finn thinks quickly. “You did the hard part, of course, but we helped decorate. And Ben didn’t do anything!” Leia waits for him to continue. After a few moments, he gives in. “Okay, he can have some of the messy ones.”

Rey sets aside four cookies with uneven icing, then grabs a few for herself. Eating one, she heads back up the stairs.

Ben looks up when she enters. On the screen, an exhausted soldier slumps against a stove as several werewolves stalk closer. “Cool, thanks!” Ben reaches for a cookie.

“Uh-uh,” Rey replies, taking a step back, “these are mine. Yours are downstairs.”

Ben considers this. “But you did put some aside?”

“Yeah,” Rey concedes, before adding, “I don’t know how long they’ll be safe, though. Better head down soon if you don’t want someone to steal them.”

Ben huffs, but he does not argue. “Want to watch the rest?”

On the screen, the soldier looks at a photograph of his wife before igniting a broken gas line by the stove. A moment later, the entire cabin explodes.

“I… okay,” Rey says. With a scene like that, how could she say no? She sits down on his bed and watches while the last surviving soldier faces off with the final werewolf.

When the battle reaches its bloody, satisfying conclusion and the soldier limps off, Ben turns to Rey, a little smile on his face. “What would Uncle Luke say if he knew you were watching a werewolf movie?”

Rey kicks his chair. “Don’t tell him! You’d be in just as much trouble as I would. More, probably, since it was your idea. And you watched more of it!” She realizes too late that her voice is starting to rise. Did her dad hear?

“Relax,” Ben says. “I’m not gonna tell. It’s Halloween, right? It’s all about doing stuff that might get you in trouble. Our parents should be glad we’re not lighting things on fire, or something.”

They are quiet for a few moments before Rey asks, “You really like Halloween, don’t you?”

“Sure, what’s not to like? Monsters, graveyards, curses, ghosts…”

Rey smiles. “Kids dressed as superheroes, fairies, and pirates…”

Ben waves a hand. “Sure, okay, but that’s just the part that’s for little kids.”

“While monsters are for mature grown-ups like you?”

Ben thinks about that before answering. “I could say something about how monsters reflect something inside all of us, and how horror movies speak to us on a deep, almost subconscious level. But I don’t want to sound too pompous.”

Rey rolls her eyes. “Too late for that.”

Her cousin continues, “But really, I just think that monsters are cool.” He shrugs. “Honestly, that’s good enough for me.”

Rey considers it. “Your mom said something like that, too.”

Ben groans. “Please don’t tell her that I agreed with her!”

“All right, but you need to come downstairs and get your cookies. And maybe give candy to a few trick-or-treaters?” She considers, then adds, “You would totally scare them.”

Ben sighs but gets up from his chair. A shred from his tattered cloak gets caught in one of his chair’s arms, and it takes him and Rey a moment to get it untangled. When he is free, they walk down the stairs.

Han looks up from the couch when they reach the bottom. “Great costume, Ben!”

Rey realizes what’s happening. She puts a hand on Ben’s arm. “Oh, I forgot to warn you…”

Leia swoops over from the kitchen, “Guess what?” Chewie follows her, his plush bat wings flopping around.

Luke and Poe stand nearby. Luke holds a camera, and Poe has his phone out, both ready to capture the moment. They both grin.

Han produces a flimsy black cape with a high, crumpled collar from the fold in the couch and puts it on with a flourish. Leia takes off her sweatshirt and sweatpants, revealing a black dress underneath. Both of them put cheap plastic vampire fangs in their mouths. “We’re vampires too!” Leia and Han announce, not quite in unison.

Ben looks between them, momentarily too surprised to say anything. Rey groans inwardly. Ben had been so proud of his costume, and his parents had gone out of their way to make fun of it. What makes it worse is that she had been the one who told them that Ben would be dressing as a vampire.

Sheepishly, she tells Ben, “Remember when I ran into you in the Halloween store? That’s when you told me you were planning to dress as a vampire, and I told your parents.”

“Vampire family picture!” Luke calls. Leia and Han stand on either side of Ben, both with an arm around him. Han crouches a little, looks at Chewie, and pats his thigh. Chewie places his front paws on Han’s thigh so that he’s in the shot.

Rey steps back, out of the picture. “Sorry about this,” she says, watching Ben’s face carefully for his reaction.

To Rey’s surprise, Ben starts to smile. He hastily rearranges it into an evil grin. “Well, I was a vampire first,” he announces, “and if you’re vampires because of me, that means you’re both my vampiric minions!”

Leia and Han exchange a look, surprised at this turn of events. Leia starts to smile, then Han does, too. It’s infectious, and soon everyone is laughing.

They take pictures in various groups, by family and by age group. Finn and Rey get their picture taken together as Scully and Mulder, and Finn talks her into posing back-to-back, with fingerguns. It’s not so bad, Rey decides. Finn is clearly thrilled, and she gets to be a part of that. Their costumes connect the two of them, a tangible reminder of their friendship.

Ben takes advantage of a moment when nobody is taking his picture to duck into the kitchen and retrieve his cookies. A moment later, they hear him shout, “Hey! Who took a bite out of my cookie?”

Chewie trots past, wagging his tail. Rey spots the crumbs in the fur around his mouth. “The truth is out there,” she says with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta reader!


End file.
